Friday, March 29, 2024

Insight Into Insurtech Solutions That Impact Life Insurance Awareness

September is Life Insurance Awareness Month. It’s well known that four out of 10 American households are putting their financial future at risk by not having life insurance. I wanted to dig into the little known aspects of pre-sales, sales, fulfillment, and inforce digital platforms that make a difference in generating new business, motivating consumers, placing business, and policy retention.

Pre-Sales and Sales Technology Solutions that Engage Consumers to Buy
Digital point-of-sale tools are surging in the marketplace that are both consumer and advisor facing. What’s new are the innovative sales models leveraging insurtech created to target the 72 million millennials (ages 25-40), and also to simplify the process for everyone applying for life insurance. I reached out to Patrick Bowen who is one of the co-founders of InsurAware. Patrick has a long and impressive career in sales leadership with Genworth, Midland National, and Legal & General America. “As the wealth gap in the United States continues to grow, the coverage gap is putting millions of families and communities at grave financial risk in the event of the loss of a breadwinner. Our industry must improve on attracting new customers, and through our proprietary lead-generation and lead-nurturing algorithms, InsurAware is bringing awareness and accessibility to life insurance for previously underserved populations,” explained Patrick. What you don’t see with many point-of-sale life solutions is the participation in the complete value chain that includes lead generation, lead marketing, and lead fulfillment. InsurAware has a digital, cloud-based platform that is agile with a versatile chassis. It can generate leads organically or from an existing database.

We are now several years down the road into the Fintech transformation era. There is no doubt that insurtech platforms are now inspiring more financial advisors and consumers to consider and adopt life insurance. New online digital distributors—such as HavenLife™, Ladder™, and Ethos Life™—deliver experiences that help more and more middle-market consumers quickly and easily purchase term life insurance. So much so that Ethos Life’s tagline is “Life insurance made easy.”

The same growth opportunity exists for the BGA community if they direct their focus toward adopting and delivering new digital experiences where it matters most—at the point of sale (PoS). Why? Let’s look at a few key market opportunity growth trends now in play which underpin this emerging landscape, if U.S. life and annuity distribution shift with the times:

  • A complete shift by financial advisors to digital planning and product experiences.
  • Millennials are now aging up to 42 and entering prime retirement planning years.
  • New agents (Millennials, GenZ) looking to learn and sell product on digital platforms.

Today, the life insurance sector is rapidly making the shift to close the digital experience gap in this regard. There is a new drive to more clearly articulate the permanent life insurance value proposition through visual story-telling—with the objective to help transform the agent-consumer discussion. Ensight’s new “Sales Story” platform continues to drive a significant leap forward in helping to meet this emerging industry dynamic. The configurable sales story engine enables carriers and distributors to rapidly create a broad range of different types of digital, interactive sales experiences—based on rich content and personalized client illustration data. For instance, a “Sales Story” may take the form of a new engaging product or sales concept to support a critical market launch, encapsulating the product benefits and performance in an intuitive, personalized interactive microsite. Or a “story” may take the form of an online product training course. Or a step-by-step “sales playbook” for the agent to walk a client through a proposal at the point of sale. Modernizing point-of-sale agent support and client digital experiences is critical to sustainable growth for the life and annuity sector going forward.

Illustration systems play a critical role in the sales process and the ultimate buying decision for life insurance and annuity products. These systems are crucial in providing detailed, informative, and compliant illustrations. They are quickly evolving into a valuable and powerful tool to drive sales and instill consumer confidence.

The evolution of illustration systems is to not just be a tool that generates numbers and disclaimers, but is a significant piece engaging with the consumer in the sales process. “Technology has transformed illustration systems exponentially by increasing their value in driving new sales while delivering significant operational efficiencies,” says Lyndon Edwards, president of illustrate inc, a leading provider of quoting and illustration solutions for the life and annuity industry. “These robust and feature-rich Insurtech solutions are designed to provide instant information and simplify the buying process in an engaging and collaborative environment. These new-age solutions simplify the process by providing a quick and easy-to-understand system for even the most complex products and client situations, leading to a higher rate of success.” Edwards adds, “Layering in customer and user experience, sales tools, and innovative technology, with the ability to generate instant, detailed, and compliant illustration reports provides tremendous value to the buying process and is a highly effective tool in driving new business.”

Life Insurance Fulfillment Process Can Save Lives
I think today we overlook the value to the consumer of paramedical exams for life insurance. Medical exams for life insurance often provide insight into medical conditions previously undiscovered. I spoke to Joe Klein, senior vice president of National Accounts at American Para Professional Systems (APPS). Joe explained that by completing the medical exam and blood draw with APPS, consumers can become much more informed about their health via simple, secure, no cost access to their lab results. Once their laboratory results are available, the applicant receives a text message to log in via Clinical Reference Laboratory’s online portal called Access My Labs 2.0. A brief video is provided to the applicant so they will understand the process and power of the information they will receive from their blood and urine test results.

AccessMyLab 2.0 Overview.mp4 from Clinical Reference Laboratory on Vimeo.

According to the CDC… (https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/quick-facts.html):

  • One in five diabetics don’t know they have it.
  • More than 88 million U.S. adults, over a third, have pre-diabetes, and more than 84 percent of them don’t know they have it.
  • Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States (and may be underreported).

Policy Preservation—Engaging Consumers with Mobile Apps
The fact is consumers miss life insurance premium payments for various reasons. When this happens a carrier typically sends a “Late Payment Notice” to the customer. Unfortunately that piece of snail mail is quite often overlooked or ignored by the customer. This practice has resulted in only 16 percent of customers making the timely payment, and up to 84 percent of those policies lapsing. The result is families lose critical financial protection and carriers have the business fall off their books. The good news: When a customer has a digital connection with the carrier, typically a carrier app, the results can be greatly improved. When a customer misses a premium payment, that customer still has to be sent the snail mail warning of potential lapse, but also can be sent a push notification, text or email notifying the customer of the missed payment with an offer to accept the payment immediately through an ACH or credit card payment. Sureify has a mobile app “Lifetime Service” which enables digital self-servicing for your customers. It empowers customers to securely manage everything from payments to beneficiary updates. Sureify’s customers have reported going from 16 percent preservation to as much as 64 percent—a 300 percent increase in business staying on the books. A win for the customer, the carrier, the agent and the reinsurer.

Another valuable service is an annual policy review. A good example is a reminder for the customer to review the beneficiaries, not only of their individual life insurance policies, but their group insurance policies, 401(k)s, pension and IRAs. Recently, one of Sureify’s customers sent push, text and email notices to their customers suggesting they review and update their beneficiary. The result was five percent of their customers updated, with ease, their beneficiaries. The carrier received many thank you notes from policy owners who discovered that their ex-spouse or ex-partner was still listed as the beneficiary. A simple call to action, typically not one an agent would do, that resulted in great appreciation from the customer. It’s well documented that significant increase in NPS (net promoter score), increases in persistency, and a five times greater likelihood to buy additional insurance from the carrier is a direct result of the carriers providing an Uber/Amazon/Netflix modern technological experience.

We are going through an insurtech evolution right now for life insurance. This goes beyond mature functionality and integrated solutions in life insurance sales tools. These new innovative solutions and processes are engaging and intelligent. The end result is that we are educating the consumer, simplifying the process, and enabling self-service. Speed and convenience are important components, but if we want to succeed in getting more households insured, then awareness needs to be woven through the entire value chain from pre-sales to sales, applying, fulfillment and post-issue.

Discover New Innovations In The Life Insurance Underwriting Process

It seems in 2021 that every couple of months I learn about a software solution, new process, or new service that innovates, enhances, and accelerates life insurance underwriting. There are now platforms for engaging the life agent, and outsourcing the BGA underwriting tasks that helps accelerate the informal process. Solution providers have created for carriers new innovative outsource underwriting services that result in reduced costs and more efficiencies. And yes I continue to share new information on APIs, specifically impacting the whole underwriting experience from digital point-of-sale to a carrier’s back office.

Automating and Accelerating the Informal Process for Impaired Risk Cases
You don’t often see a fully automated platform for agents for tracking underwriting quotes. BackNine Insurance, a leading BGA, has a software solution called Back Office Support System (BOSS), which helps independent agents and larger agencies alike in cultivating new opportunities while keeping everyone informed 24/7 on current quotes, requests, and case updates. The BOSS platform supports anyone selling life insurance by providing structure to write the type of business that best suits the needs of respective clients—from start to finish. BOSS essentially provides instant access to managing the lifecycle of all agents’ policies. Policy status, values, and beneficiaries for multiple carriers are housed in one location, allowing agents to efficiently service their clients. Agents are also able to optimize all elements of their business as the platform also allows them to view appointments, cases, commissions, quotes, and reporting, and it creates a digital hierarchy for commissions within an agency. And, it integrates seamlessly with the Quote & Apply e-application and quoting system.

Ian Ryan, brokerage director at BackNine Insurance, explained, “Impaired risk quotes (also known as quick quotes) are able to be tracked within the BOSS platform. If an application is submitted and the case isn’t approved, the reasons for the decline are sent, or other quotes are provided that the client was approved for with other carriers. This response time is quite efficient, typically within 24-48 hours. At that point we run quotes for the agent, then input all this information into our BOSS system. The client’s name and information won’t be sent to the carrier—they just require the client’s gender, age, and basic information—and it’s all anonymous. They won’t review documents or attachments at this point; we provide a brief synopsis of the client’s situation and any medical issues. It’s important to note that these are tentative offers based strictly upon the information provided. Once the response is received, we’ll include the impaired risk quote before sending a formal application.”

“These impaired risk quotes are typically used when an agent has a client with various health issues—so why waste their time on a formal application if the carrier isn’t going to be in a rate class they can afford. That being said, if the client has one or more health issues that are identified in the MIB or with prescriptions, the quote can change. It’s not a guaranteed offer; it’s tentative based upon the information we give for review. All of these responses and information are saved, and agents can go back into BOSS wherein they can view the carriers that have and haven’t responded. There’s also an easily accessible impaired risk quote section within BOSS where agents can find their client’s name, see exactly what information was sent to carriers, and what responses have been received.”

Outsource Underwriting Services for Distributors and Carriers
Employee Pooling (EP) is renowned for helping customers transform software platforms into software systems, finding the perfect integration of software and expert human capital to deliver solutions that increase efficiencies. For 10 years, EP has partnered with hundreds of distributors, financial institutions, and software companies to make the shift to working smarter by removing obstacles getting in the way of increasing profits and enhancing the customer experience. EP provides straight through processing solutions from sales support and agent appointments to case management and underwriting through commissions and policy services, and countless other tasks that are guaranteed to increase connectivity with your customers and increase profits.

You can finally stop putting your clients through a blind and seemingly endless, expensive, relationship-killing journey that is the traditional informal process. EP Accelerated Informal (AI) will take a case from darkness to light with just $50, an authorization and 24 hours. EP’s in-house underwriters use a rich medical data retrieval platform that delivers a comprehensive applicant profile using prescription drug and clinical lab history, and prescribing physician and actuarial data. In just one day, you have a professional risk summary that points you in the right direction for shopping a case.

Management Research Services, Inc. (MRS) has introduced its newest capability: Outsource Underwriting Services for insurance carriers. With over 30 years of life and health insurance experience, MRS is adding to its robust insurance automation capabilities by building on its proprietary technology platforms. The benefits gained through MRS’ turn-key underwriting services will provide agencies quicker processing as well as time and money savings. MRS and its insurance automation technologies keep carriers at the vanguard of an auto-code movement, allowing them to take advantage of an evolving insurance industry going through a significant digital transformation. MRS’ Outsource Underwriting Services will provide a variety of opportunities, including platform underwriting referrals, fulfillment of the chief underwriting role, audits, APS review/summary by the underwriter, MIB maintenance, MRS AutoCode model inclusion and contestable claim review.

MRS assists with insurance cases referred to underwriting for a decision in which the automated platforms could not make a determination or when additional information is required with intervention by an underwriter. MRS can provide a complete underwriting review and interpretation of attending physician records in conjunction with client acceptance guidelines as well as do periodic audits to remain compliant. For carriers that require underwriters to assist with short-term overflow, handle unanticipated fluctuations in business volumes, or are looking for a strategic outsourcing underwriting partner to support on a long-term basis.

Standardizing Part 2 Medical Questions for Speed-to-Market
The fulfillment process behind the scenes takes quite a bit of money, time and effort to implement from Part 1 questions and forms in a drop ticket, to Part 2 reflexive questions for a call center or digital Paramed. ApplicInt has just launched their “FAST Complete Suite.” It’s a low code, user customizable at a low cost which only takes two to three weeks to implement. The secret sauce is in the best of breed reflexive questions for impairments or positive responses. “FAST U*Complete” is the consumer facing quoting and eApp; “FAST CallComplete” is the reflexive scripted interviews for call centers; and “FAST ExamComplete” is reflexive interview for examiners to accurately collect carrier compliant questions. Top level Part 1 questions are easily customizable and mapped to state-filed forms; and data flows seamlessly from the consumer, call center, paramedical provider to the carrier.

APIs Supporting Underwriting for Carrier Policy Admin Systems
Everyone is building new technology based on APIs. I reached out to EIS whose platform is considered cutting edge. EIS is a global insurance software company and industry leader for carrier policy administration. Their EIS SuiteTM is an open, flexible platform of core systems and digital solutions that liberate carriers to accelerate and scale innovation, launch products faster, deliver new revenue channels, and create powerful customer experiences. Digital point of sales solutions, call centers for life insurance fulfillment, and other third party trading partners can create a personalized underwriting experience at the individual consumer level as well as at the product level through APIs from a carrier policy admin system and underwriting workbench. A flexible-configurable platform that uses cloud-based technology is able to trigger the API calls that are necessary through a solid rules engine and the right reflexive questioning. This is ideal for the industry for multiple reasons. 1) It allows carriers to reduce underwriting costs per applicant by only calling out to the additional data that is needed based on individual rules; 2) It speeds up the underwriting process, regardless of being fully underwritten or straight-through processing (STP); and, 3) It provides customers with a personalized experience based on who they are, the products they are applying for, and their own health rather than having a one-size-fits-all approach.

EIS’ Cloud-native, microservices, API-based platform gives carriers the ability to be underwriting agnostic. To personalize underwriting at the individual and product levels. Through its extensive API library it enables quick and easy integrations with not only established third-party sources that support underwriting such as Aura, Magnum, MIB, Milliman, ExamOne, etc., but also those third party sources. In addition, the Underwriting Workbench provides all of the collected information in one, easy-to-use system rather than having to go out to multiple systems (such as internal legacy solutions or external web-based applications) to pull in information for human-based underwriting. It keeps all of the external third-party data within the policy admin solution so that data is never lost and can be used down the line for claims.

The EIS Suite sends real-time notifications and updates to the distributor and agent keeping them informed through the underwriting process. At any time, an agent/broker can monitor the status of their clients, see where they are in the process, and get notifications from the underwriter (or third-party call center) if additional information is needed. It can trigger the agent into action to reach out to the applicant to ask for more info or to give them a nudge if they are taking too long to get their APS documentation or paramedical exam. With the EIS Suite persona-based applications, agents are kept in the loop at every stage in the policy lifecycle, from underwriting and service to claims.
Is it advances in technology, COVID, or just coincidence that we have recently seen a flood of innovations in the life insurance underwriting process? Whichever way, from Electronic Health Records (EHR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Predictive Analytics, underwriting automation continues to flourish. Don’t be surprised that I make more discoveries and share them in a future Tech-Tock article.

Life And Annuity Inforce Policy Service Innovations

There have been many recent technology advancements in life insurance and annuity policy owner service processing. Back in the day the agent or the policy owner had to call a life carrier’s toll-free phone number to speak to a customer service representative who would then mail forms to the policy owner to complete and mail back. A simple beneficiary change could take weeks. Later, using fax machines and email, the process accelerated but was still not efficient. In recent years the next iteration was carriers building client account portals on their website. The portal would provide some policy information and the ability to download a PDF form and upload it to send it to the carrier. These client portals later had more self-service capabilities. This leads us to today, with taking life and annuity inforce policies and leveraging data for advisor servicing, analysis, mobile consumer self-service, and carrier policy admin automation.

Agent Inforce Policy Management Platform Through Data Analytics
As a distributor, your success depends largely on your advisors’ success. At times that codependency can be a source of tension, especially if you’re not both equipped with processes and tools that help you optimize your efforts and output. For example, you may want your advisors to do routine policy reviews on their entire inforce book because you know that practice often leads to meaningful conversations with clients that lead to new sales opportunities. But for advisors with large books of business that’s an unmanageable task. If left to their own manual devices, those reviews simply won’t get done and your advisors will be unknowingly leaving all those sales opportunities untapped. Even if you provide them with a platform that consolidates all their inforce data, it’s still not enough.

A solution to this problem would be an Inforce Policy Management Platform like the one offered by Proformex, which provides actionable, intelligent data that is prioritized for you and your advisors. Proformex surfaces opportunities and risks so you know with just a few clicks which policies need you and your advisors’ attention most. That’s inforce management made smarter, not harder, thanks to powerful data analytics and technology. Proformex’s automated policy monitoring is crucial to meeting the policyowner expectations throughout the life of their contract.

Another inforce policy management platform for distributors and agents is NIC developed by Insured Connect. NIC is a multi-carrier inforce data and technology platform that empowers life insurance distributors and agents with access to their inforce life and annuity data. NIC partners directly with carriers to receive daily data feeds and automatically generate sales and service opportunities from the inforce data, helping distributors and agents to monetize their book. Through APIs the inforce data can be integrated with agency management systems, CRMs, and other marketing systems for the purpose of creating sales and marketing campaigns. This also eliminates the need of having to go to carrier websites to see inforce policy information.

Consumer Mobile Inforce Self-Service
San Jose-based insurtech leader Sureify recently held a webinar to address the relatively slow progression of life insurers toward self-service initiatives. Connecting to older or multiple systems can be difficult, and the industry as a whole has been reluctant to upgrade core systems that can integrate with the new digitized mobile environment. The company’s LifetimeSERVICE module solves a major dilemma for insurers–it provides a digital solution that meets the growing demand for self-serve capability, but it integrates directly with policy administration systems for a comprehensive digital transformation eliminating the need to start from scratch with implementation.

Sureify CEO Dustin Yoder says that the industry understands the value of offering more robust customer self-service, but some still have not made the move to put the end user’s experience at the center of development for self-service initiatives. “Many insurers we talk to start with what can—or can’t—be done based on the limitations of their core systems,” he said. “In truth, those core systems must be modernized through digital means to alleviate pain points. Anything that begins with what the policyholder wants is worth the effort and will deliver results.”

Carrier Policy Admin System Automation for Servicing Annuities
MDI, Management Data, Inc., has worked with long-time customer National Catholic Society of Foresters (NCSF) to implement a new online quoting for single premium annuities and for supplementary contract payouts. Previously, if a policy owner wanted to know how much monthly income would be available from withdrawal, surrender, or claims proceeds, NCSF would have to refer this request to the actuarial department to get the calculations done. Then a policy service rep would communicate the information to the customer.

Now the policy service rep can go to their FIMMAS policy administration quote screen for annuity/supplementary contract payouts. They enter some basic info, select a specific payout option, and then get an immediate quote of the calculated monthly income. This calculation for supplementary contracts uses the greater of a) the result based on current annuity mortality and interest, and, b) the result based on the mortality and interest guaranteed in the original product.

Lisa Bickus, NCSF CEO, says, “We needed help rolling out new products in a more cost effective, timely and efficient manner. The MDI system is simple to use and a valued and trusted partner that wants to ensure our success.” FIMMAS quoting saves NCSF much time in the workflow and allows policy service to provide quick info to the policy owner or agent. Also, the quotes can be saved and several variations of the quotes can be run. The same calculations used in quoting are also used in FIMMAS new business when processing a new annuity or supplementary contract case.

Advanced Data Analytics Driving the Life New Business and Inforce Servicing Process
Automated risk decision making and data analytics has been woven into the fabric of life insurance new business and inforce policy service processes from digital point of sale to carrier back-office systems. In the center of it all is LexisNexis. So, I reached out to Jena L. Kennedy, senior director, Life Vertical Market, at LexisNexis Risk Solutions:

“Even as a global pandemic has served to be one of the most powerful drivers of digital transformation the life insurance industry has seen, we believe there are important lessons to be learned. Most companies would be wise to understand that it’s not enough to just ‘go digital.’ In fact, if your approach is simply to automate an existing paper or manual process, you’ve missed the point. And that point is to intelligently leverage data and analytics to improve your workflow processes—not simply automate them.

Then, beware of tunnel vision: Understand that automation need not focus exclusively on underwriting. Think about the other points of contact that you have with consumers. Whether collecting data for an application, enabling self-service, or facilitating a claim, all of these ‘moments of truth’ are ripe for transformation and improvement, courtesy of data and advanced analytics. Do you provide a seamless consumer experience, pre-filling consumer data and verifying identity credentials? Introducing the right data and analytics can help substantially reduce the number of data collection points and can provide insight to help producers ensure they are submitting accurate data.

In fact, we are focused on providing producers with more insight at the point of sale/application to enable higher placement ratios, help determine the most appropriate payment plans for improved retention and customer satisfaction, and even identify proposed insureds who are most likely to pass automated underwriting. Using data and analytics at the point of service can also enable faster, more flexible, self-service options that help consumers feel in control but at the same time demonstrate that you will safeguard their data and their privacy.

We believe that the organizations who take the time today to properly optimize the use of data and analytics in their workflows will reap the benefits. According to McKinsey, ‘Companies that successfully deliver a remarkable digital experience while also keeping customers’ data safe can see a potential 20 to 35 percent boost in customer-satisfaction scores.’”1

The Future of Innovation for Life and Annuities
Where are we heading next for life and annuity innovation? Artificial intelligence (AI) has spawned a new field called “augmented analytics” which takes business intelligence to the next level of crunching vast amounts of data that can be applied to improve efficiencies in the life and annuity new business and inforce processes. AI will be used to build better customer experiences and use machine learning to automate tasks. Since the 72 million Millennials in the USA spend on average 3.7 hours per day on their mobile devices, it makes sense for carriers to invest in engaging with their policy owners in the mobile environment. IOT devices (wearables) for health and wellness will continue to grow for both customer engagement/retention as well as impacting the premium amount clients pay. Behavior economics will also play a role in the future of life insurance and annuities. Vendors are already creating algorithms to monitor books of insurance business online browsing habits. A customer, for example, who is looking online for a mortgage becomes a flagged event that they may need some more life insurance. These are models that Facebook and Amazon use for advertising products that have a specific interest to the consumer or related to the product they are purchasing. Stay tuned…

Reference:

  1. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/is-cybersecurity-incompatible-with-digital-convenience.

Innovation Of Life Automated Underwriting And Digital Health Engagement

Automated Underwriting is the hot technology trend this year. There have been advancements since COVID-19 in 2020 from the growth in adoption of Electronic Health Records to AI in digital point of sales automated underwriting decisions. Data Analytics for predictive modeling is not some experimental outlier anymore. It is being used in mainstream underwriting today by life carriers and reinsurers. As we continue to keep you updated on the latest innovations in automated underwriting, it is also important to recognize the automation in the life insurance fulfillment process—like digital parameds and electronic lab slips. New software platforms relating to health and wellness are sprouting up in the market for carriers to offer to their policyholders. We are going to introduce in this article more details around Consumer Digital Health Engagement.

Automated Underwriting is Driven by Data and AI
SCOR is a global reinsurance company providing its clients with a broad range of innovative solutions. They have been on the cutting-edge doing studies, research, and development in automated underwriting (AUW). SCOR’s experts in underwriting have published on their website several articles on the future of life insurance underwriting. What they forecasted last year and in 2019 is being realized today.

I met with SCOR and they directed me to these articles, so here are some important facts: “Most companies agree the future of underwriting will be data driven. Data is one of the most valuable resources available to companies today, with new layers being added continuously. Computing capability is increasing and development of predictive models using machine learning techniques provide the ability to become much smarter in our assessment of risks. What does this mean for the future of underwriting? Underwriting assessments will be predominantly digital, will be unique to the individual risks and will require transparency.”

“Predictive models are an incredibly powerful tool with the potential to drive the life insurance industry forward in ways that are good for both consumers (improving their purchasing experience by removing intrusive requirements and long delays) and carriers (increasing taken rates and persistency and increasing the accuracy of mortality assessments). Traditional rules-based approaches start with assumptions and predict outcomes, while a predictive-model based strategy starts with outcomes and uses modelling techniques to identify data characteristics most likely to produce those outcomes. The predictive power of a model should be supported by a rules-based safety net. This predictive power coupled with the continued emergence of new underwriting data sources, puts us on the cusp of a sea change in what it means to underwrite.“

Velogica is SCOR’s automated underwriting platform designed to make instant underwriting decisions. It is integrated into the life insurance point-of-sales process. Velogica is helping major clients drive new models of efficient distribution through predictive risk assessment and point-of-sale policyholder capture. The Velogica algorithm correlates information from the life insurance application, motor vehicle reports, MIB reports and prescription drug history, and, in some states, criminal history. Clinical lab histories and credit-based mortality scores are on the horizon.

The Challenge of Automated Underwriting of Foreign Nationals
Global Insurance Solutions Group (Global SG) is not your typical life BGA because their niche business is providing life insurance to foreign nationals. They are experts at underwriting proposed insureds who travel to, reside and/or are citizens of other countries. Global SG works with specific carriers and life products that are available for this target market. I contacted Rita Northen, director of operations at Global SG and I asked her, “Does the progress we have made in automated underwriting work for this market?”

Rita explained, “Automated underwriting within the U.S. has expanded dramatically over the last several years. U.S. insurance carriers can collect an enormous amount of data on their insureds during the underwriting process. We are all aware of these data examples, i.e. MVR, script checks, MIB, and EHR. Our business focus at Global Insurance Solutions Group is in the high-net-worth foreign national market. The majority of our insureds reside outside of the U.S. and the automated underwriting processes frequently are not approved for our clients. Most carriers do not have the capabilities to access medical and financial data in other countries (or are not interested in trying).” I would like to clarify that automated underwriting does exist in other countries and medical data is available, however access to this data has either limited or restricted from companies outside of specific countries. Also U.S. life carriers have specific guidelines for underwriting foreign nationals, which a lot of its process involves paper and an underwriter to make a decision.

There is hope in making progress in getting access to some data. Rita wanted to emphasize the following: “One notable exception is Prudential, who we find takes a deeper dive into the data available on the internet. On our HNW foreign nationals, Prudential runs what it calls a DVR (Data Verification Report). These reports usually take a few days to complete and, although they are not always fully accurate or complete, typically give the carrier some independent information on the insured. The process definitely helps us in completing our cases quicker without having to get “the paper requirements” that, in this day and age, we all try to avoid.”

Consumer Digital Health Engagement
There is another new innovative trend in Insurtech. This new category is “Customer Engagement/Retention.” These are consumer mobile apps designed for carriers to offer to their policyholders to encourage healthy life choices, which in turn helps keep the business on the books.

Why Digital Health Engagement for Insurers? For life insurers, the value proposition is pretty obvious–healthy people are more likely to live longer. Yet, the majority of carriers do not engage with their members around their health (other than the initial exam, which is not exactly helpful). There are many benefits for insurers to implement an ongoing digital engagement strategy centered around health that delights users and provides benefits back to the issuer. Improving and helping to maintain overall health and wellbeing is the foundation. From there, a digital health engagement strategy can be used to differentiate your brand from competitors. With a custom branded white label app, members see your brand on a daily basis while they manage their lifestyle and positively associate it with helping them live better lives. This is very different from the relationship a traditional insurer has with their inforce policy holders. Once members are tracking their health and engaging with the branded platform, new personalized opportunities for cross- and up-sell are created. Rewards can increase use and retention, increase brand loyalty, and provide an attractive selling feature. dacadoo offers a robust health engagement platform, available as fully branded white label solutions, to provide these benefits and more to insurers around the world.

What’s your Health Score? Individuals have more health data than ever before available at their fingertips from trackers, wearables, and smartphone apps. It can be difficult to make sense of the volume of data and understand what truly affects your health. dacadoo’s mission is to make health measurable and understandable. One way it does so is by the Health Score, a real-time number from 1-1,000 based on 300 million person-years of clinical data, which has been patented and validated. dacadoo also offers the Risk Engine for Health quantification, based on the same underlying science as the Health Score, which can be accessed by API.

How can insurers use this data? Most insurers are not taking advantage of the recent advances in health tracking technology. By taking in these new data sources, such as steps and other health data, they can better estimate probabilities for mortality and morbidity. dacadoo’s Risk Engine was created to meet this need and augment existing underwriting. By providing a more complete health data set and imputing missing data points, insurers can strengthen accelerated underwriting, underwriting automation, and pricing engines. Some innovative insurers are creating new products to incentivize healthy behavior and offer premium discounts. Another use case is to recognize what behaviors have the biggest benefit, for instance increasing daily steps and activity, and offer programs for members to maintain or improve these areas. When people are healthier it’s a win-win—the individuals live better lives and it’s better for insurers.

Automating the Life Fulfillment Process
APPS electronic lab slip, in partnership with CRL, provides a fully digital solution. This automated process called eSlip, enables examiners to securely capture applicants’ biometric data and have the applicant sign the consent form via a tablet. Upon completion, the data is transmitted securely to CRL.

This process provides an electronic chain of custody that parallels the physical chain of custody of the specimen. It closes several gaps in the traditional process and ensures the data integrity throughout the process, eliminating the potential for unmatched results upon submission to the carrier. eSlip also reduces the risk associated with potential lost PHI during transit and the resultant consumer friction. It only makes sense that with today’s eApplication processes, the consumer experience continues through an end-to-end digital process. Bye bye paper!

Consumer Direct Life eApp While Maintaining The Agent Ecosystem

We are hearing new terms like eBGAs and eRetailers for the sale of insurance products. Putting the research, education, quoting, and electronic insurance application submission process in the hands of the consumer while maintaining the agent ecosystem is the new model for marketing and selling insurance. This insurance sales model is growing in popularity. The type of insurance products on the direct-to-consumer platforms include: Simplified term insurance, final expense, guaranteed income, HMA, disability insurance, critical illness, and, yes, even cross-selling to property and casualty. More product types continue to be simplified for this sales model like guaranteed universal life, long term care insurance, and Medicare supplemental insurance. Why is this model growing significantly in 2021? There are three reasons: Social media, Millennials, and COVID-19.

In the U.S.A, the average time spent on social media is two hours and 25 minutes daily. The most effective medium for marketing today is through social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and others. Americans also spend about 5.3 hours daily on their mobile devices. This is an indicator that the platforms you use for quoting insurance and marketing should either be a native mobile app, hybrid mobile app, or mobile browser optimized Web App. Millennials, ages 25-40 born between 1981 and 1996, grew up with access to technology, online retail, and the sharing economy; therefore, they exhibit a discernable preference for experiences over product when spending time and money. Eighty percent of Millennials read reviews and do their own research before making a purchasing decision. They will ask for help when needed after they already have attempted the research. The target market of Millennials make up 72.1 million Americans. Yes, Millennials spend about 5.7 hours daily on their smartphones.

Since COVID-19 hit in 2020, the traditional method of selling insurance has relegated consumers to stay home and life agents to sell remotely. This has resulted in the acceleration of virtual tools, Artificial Intelligence (AI) for automated underwriting, and building out an easy consumer experience while still having an insurance advisor available for assistance when needed. Insurance advisors are given the software solutions and websites for marketing direct to consumers by a wholesaler like a BGA, IMO or GA at little or no cost. These direct-to-consumer tools are used to educate, quote, and have the consumer submit an insurance application direct while the agent and his/her upline receive commissions from the carrier. The consumer has easy access to an insurance advisor or call center for assistance during every step of the process from pre-sales to completing the insurance application. If a life insurance distributor did not develop these consumer tools in-house, then they are using a solution provider. The distributor or carrier purchases a license to use the consumer-direct software solutions, which can be used as a recruiting tool for agents. The huge advantage is that this enables multi-channel penetration like property and casualty shops, banks, health agents, and life insurance direct marketers. The formula for success is all about the consumer experience!

Consumer Engaging Solutions
Covr Financial Technologies’ digital, white-labeled platforms integrate seamlessly with financial brands to provide life, long term care, disability, and supplemental health solutions from top carriers to their clients in a simple, turnkey way. AI-driven tools, a digital advice model and omni-channel sales support seamlessly blend high-tech and high-touch. Covr is dedicated to transforming the insurance purchase process from something that was previously slow and paper-based to an experience that is fast, simple and digital. Covr currently serves over 25,000 financial advisors and over 20 million customers across over 30 financial institutions.

Among its new product launches are Covr’s multi-carrier term life insurance platform, which includes a growing number of instant-purchase journeys, and the proprietary LoanMatch Protector product. With Covr’s multi-carrier term insurance platform customers can apply for life insurance online in minutes, with real-time quotes available from the leading insurance carriers. Leading the way in the journey are product offerings from Bestow, Haven Life, Banner Life and Americo, which all offer fully digital, instant-decision capability and Covr’s technology to help clients find the product that fits best for them.

LoanMatch Protector mirrors the remainder of an existing mortgage, small business loan or other debt. The coverage adjusts to the client’s precise need, saving consumers up to 30 percent and offering the market-leading ability to complete the entire process in 15 minutes. Covr’s industry-leading digital life insurance platform integrates seamlessly into a financial institution’s existing website or other distribution model. This allows these financial institutions to offer a broad range of life insurance products from the leading insurance carriers to their customers. Today’s consumers expect choice, simplicity and speed when purchasing life insurance, and Covr’s technology is tailored to those demands.

Sureify’s Lifetime Platform is made up of three solutions: LifetimeAcquire, LifetimeService, and LifetimeEngage. LifetimeAcquire powers omnichannel sales capabilities that drive increased placement rates via quoting, e-application and automated underwriting. LifetimeService enables insurers to deploy a comprehensive digital self-service solution for their inforce business. And lastly, LifetimeEngage creates insights to foster a lifelong digital relationship with policyholders through multiple forms of engagement and analytics, leading to greater value for each policyholder. Sureify’s LifetimeEngage can help BGAs connect with policyholders in a meaningful, personalized, cost-effective way and engage with every customer in a way that helps ensure protection and maximize lifetime value. Rather than only having access to standard policy transaction data, Sureify’s LifetimeEngage platform delivers real time, actionable insights based on life events, interests, and personalized needs creating an organic source of cross-selling and upselling opportunities that strengthen the customer and agent relationship.

Other Consumer eApp Models
Consumers watch over 500 million hours of video daily. Imagine engaging with your clients with a Virtual Video Quoter. Well Employee Pooling (EP) has created Consumer Direct Insurance Tools (CDIT). An agent or carrier can create personalized videos about their products and educate the consumer on the importance of life insurance. CDIT is white labeled with options for you to select color and design. The videos can walk the consumer through an instant quote and an eApp. This is a great recruiting tool for BGAs. It can be co-branded for property and casualty shops, banks, and health agents. Of course, it is used by advisors for lead generation.

ApplicInt has an eApp solution called U*Complete. The power of this platform is the flexibility of the workflow model. An agent can run a quote, start a life insurance application, and then hand it off to a client to complete. U*Complete can also be integrated into a carrier’s website in a consumer direct model. ApplicInt is well known for fulfillment process software solutions like CallComplete, used at a carrier or paramed provider’s call center. They also have a digital paramed used by top providers like APPS. U*Complete is seamlessly plugged into the end-to-end life insurance electronic application process.

The Power of APIs
Solution providers are investing their research and development money into Application Programming Interface (API), which is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. Equisoft/apply is an easy to use, sales flow oriented eApp wizard for electronic insurance applications resulting in fast and seamless policy approvals used by insurance advisors. Equisoft is the king of APIs, first building their eApp to easily integrate with a carrier’s back-office policy admin system using an API. They also have an agent and client portal platform that has an API that makes it seamless to plug in third-party applications and data. The eApp engine of products rules, mapping data to the life insurance application forms and sending data and forms to the carrier can be accessed by a user interface (UI) whereby a carrier or distributor can build a consumer facing experience for eApp.

No Code eApp is a self-service model. Management Research Services (mrs) for example has created an administration tool that makes it quick and easy to set up mapping the eApp questions to the life application forms and configure all the product rules without having the vendor to program it for you. The mrs API makes it extremely easy for you to build the UI frontend on your website. This is a low cost and speed-to-market life eApp solution.

The industry has recognized the importance of APIs. The Life Distribution Technology Committee (LDTC) kicked off a project in 2021 to standardize APIs for life insurance.

Tying it all together with Mobile and Social Media
I provided some powerful statistics about how many Americans and how much time is spent daily using their mobile devices and specifically for the purpose of social media. The vendors of these consumer tools for insurance understand that their design needs to work on all devices and have optimization for the best experience possible on a smartphone or tablet like an iPad. The power of the API for eApp is that the user interface can be developed on a mobile app and a web app. An agent, for example, creates a marketing campaign targeting a specific demographic on Facebook, and then there is a link to the consumer insurance tool. The consumer runs a quote and applies for insurance in one seamless experience. The agent and his/her upline get paid their commissions.

The Acceleration Of E-Engagement For Life And Health Like Medicare Supplemental Insurance

COVID-19 has forced independent distribution into e-Engagement for life insurance and health related insurance products. Some technology vendors in the life insurance space have enhanced, configured, and marketed their solution platforms to support health products like Medicare supplemental insurance, long term care insurance, critical illness, and disability income insurance.

Medicare is now the fastest-growing segment of the health insurance market, with 10,000 baby boomers aging into the program every day. Medicare enrollment is expected to soar between 2021 and 2029, reaching 77 million enrollees by the end of the decade. That’s an increase of 1.5 million new enrollees each year. With that said, many have to make the decision of what plan they choose: Traditional Medicare and a supplemental insurance policy, often referred to as Medigap, which sees about 60 percent of the market share, or a Medicare Advantage Plan at about 40 percent. Regardless, open enrollment season is a busy one!

Digitizing Paper MedSup Insurance Applications
PaperClip Mojo is a collection of the best of technologies paired with human validation to achieve 99.9 percent accuracy at unimaginable speed. A perfect solution for the onboarding of Medicare supplement (MedSup) new business, Mojo4Medicare, the tailored version, makes the open enrollment period the same as any other day. Mojo4Medicare is designed to process unlimited Medicare application packets for a consistent turnaround time. By collapsing the cycle time, you avoid backlogs and deliver faster commission payout. Mojo4Medicare is an e-app alternative.

“There is no longer a need to increase resources, both infrastructure and labor, only to decrease those after the enrollment period,” states Suzy Tuck, vice president of sales. “With Mojo4Medicare you will enjoy the ability to maintain the processing of new business as received, increase your focus on case management without additional resources and have no adoption challenge. Staff will love it and realize that the enrollment period is like any other day!”

No-Code eApp for MedSup Insurance
Management Research Services (MRS) is an industry leader in developing customized digital and automation solutions for clients and partners. Recently, MRS led efforts to develop and help a New York brokerage firm struggling to collect In Good Order (IGO) applications from Medicare supplemental insurance (MedSup) clients in a timely manner. The main driver of these issues was that the current processes relied on legacy workflows and technologies that were unable to electronically ingest and automate the large number of handwritten applications they received. This resulted in the reliance of manual entry which consumed a large amount of time, energy, and resources. As issues and delays began to pile up, it became obvious that a new process would have to be developed to fit the needs of their operating systems and clients. MRS was identified as a potential solution to this problem and, upon understanding the challenges, MRS leveraged its no-code platform to quickly create a customized e-App to better automate the workflow. The MRS e-App was able to dramatically improve the workflows in the following areas:

  • Collection of the applications 100 percent In Good Order (IGO).
  • Substantial increases in policy processing and acceptance.
  • A better way to follow-up on missing applicant data by sending a personal URL directly to the applicant so they could easily provide the missing data needed.

The immediate results seen were improvement of time to issuance, an increase in the number of applications completed IGO, and the streamlining of back office operational efficiencies that saved time, energy, and resources. Additional opportunities around customized reporting dashboards and better real-time data analysis were identified as ways to better serve agents in the field.

One of MRS’s core business principles is that once it onboards a new client into production, the work has just begun. MRS is constantly developing new features and capabilities and since customers are always on the most updated version of the platform, these innovations are immediately available to clients. For instance, MRS has identified new integration partners that will enable compliant video communication capabilities that better enable the remote sales processes critical in times like the COVID-19 crisis. MRS will continue to innovate and lead the charge in the future of no-code platforms that advance insurance automation and support stronger sales and operational efficiencies.

Life AMS Supports Health Products
Agency management systems (AMS) for life insurance have been retrofitted to support health products. I spoke with Equisoft, who has the number one agency management system in Canada, “Centralize,” which is now available in the USA. In Canada health products like critical illness and disability income insurance have been processed by MGAs on Centralize. In order to get a perspective of the problems solved for life distributors processing new business and commissions for multi-lines of business, Equisoft answered a series of questions about their AMS.

What key challenges do distributors face today? Distributors and National Accounts are data driven businesses, but they operate in an environment that has not fully digitally transformed. They take in massive amounts of data that must be processed, analyzed and acted upon, but in many cases the workflows still involve a great many manual steps. Paper apps are still being mailed to their offices. They have to be manually entered, then sent on for processing and approval. Tasks arising from the new business intake process (like follow-ups on paramedical issues) are not automated. In many cases commission payments, claims resolution and customer service are still not as fast, seamless and user-friendly as they could be. Related to those data issues, all distributors and national accounts are seeking to attract and retain more advisors. With the advent of new distribution models, such as robo-advisors, the distributors role in policy fulfillment is lessening, decreasing the advisors’ need for that part of the traditional distributor value proposition. Instead, distributors must find new ways to add value to advisor businesses as part of an emerging new value proposition that serves the digitally transformed insurance landscape. In the new world, advisors place more value on partnerships with those organizations that can help them grow their business.

How are Application Processes Automated? Distributors and national accounts need to be able to process new business from advisors on a daily basis. Our advanced case management workflow speeds up the underwriting process for distributors. Equisoft/Centralize allows them to enter policy applications either manually or through a feed from the carriers. They can send those policies through to the carrier and get them approved and in- force—giving distributors the ability to push the process from beginning to end. In a nutshell, distributors who use Equisoft/Centralize find there is less manual intervention needed from the distributors to see the policy through to in-force status. Our automations and case management workflow are unparalleled, ensuring our distributors’ clients can confidently and accurately process cases all the while providing excellent service to their clients—the advisors.

How is the platform improving back-office efficiencies? The ease-of-use of Equisoft/Centralize is a huge benefit for distributors. Many distributors, even today, are still getting paper applications—advisors are actually mailing them in. Then the distributor has to manually enter them. Equisoft/Centralize greatly automates this process, which creates efficiencies for distributors and makes for a better advisor experience. How does Equisoft contribute to the digital transformation of the independent insurance channel? Equisoft/Centralize is a very modern, rules-based solution. It is also central to the emerging digital value proposition for distributors—enabling distributors to better partner with advisors in the success of their practice. It identifies opportunities for advisors, removes obstacles in the processing of new business, and makes sure they get paid faster. In total, it helps all industry stakeholders achieve the end goal—making their clients’ financial goals a reality.

How COVID-19 Forced the BGA World into e-Engagement
We are now one year past the start of COVID-19 lockdown. Our world was turned upside down as we all faced a global pandemic. Many struggled to find the right process flow and adapt to new ways of doing business. Even carriers were pushed into a “forced pilot” of e-Engagement to insure they could get underwriting information, signature requirements and policies to the customer. The changes were swift and mandatory to support the ultimate customer, the applicant/insured and their beneficiaries. With this, agencies looked to process experts whether internal in their organization or others to help with the transition. Per Stacey Paulson, director of insurance services at eNoah iSolutions, “The beauty of the BGA space is each agency has their unique culture as to what works best for them and their customer base. This serves the greater good in meeting the needs of different customers in protecting their families. The struggle was real when some were forced into an electronic application process and not having the internal resources—all while moving to a work from home environment. I’m glad we were there to help our customers through this difficult time.”

While it’s hard to think of much positive to come out of COVID-19, the forced adoption of e-Engagement opened mindsets of how to do business moving forward. It took away some of the fear and challenged us to think of different ways to engage with our peers and current and future customers.

What’s New In Life And Annuity eApp, Illustrations, Mobile And Self-Service

Life and annuity technology solutions are growing in both innovation and in the number of platforms that are available in the marketplace. Today I want to give you a taste of the latest stats on eApp and eDelivery for BGAs; a new simple method of presenting complex illustrations; a mobile modular option for carriers for eApp and illustrations; and self-service tools for policyholders.

The Latest Stats and Trends on eApp and eDelivery for BGAs
It was a no brainer to reach out to iPipeline whose eApp platform (iGO) has the biggest footprint in the BGA space. They provided the latest stats and trends in eApp and eDelivery: “Why does going digital today really matter? Over the past year, we’ve seen our world turned upside down in every way. In a business where relationships rule and in person meetings have been the key to selling more, the insurance industry was quickly turned on its head. Many carriers were left struggling with how to get paper polices out the door, agents were scrambling to figure out how to work better with consumers, and consumers were afraid to meet with anyone at the kitchen table anymore.

The good news is that the industry, although mildly prepared, is pulling through. During these times, we’ve seen a huge surge in adoption by brokerage agencies to push digital processes even further. In 2020, dozens of insurance carriers started a process to bring live more eApps and more ePolicy deliveries. Here are some benefits for you to think about, as a brokerage agency, on why having a digital strategy is essential.”

eApp

  • Shortens the application cycle time by 50 percent.
  • Average cost reduction over paper 37 percent.
  • Offers client collaboration where the agent and consumer can both work on the same digital app together—keeping the relationship, and the app, alive.
  • On Behalf Of—allows case managers to take over the eApp process for their agent to provide more value in the process.

ePolicy Delivery

  • Shortens the cycle time by 23 days on average.
  • Increases placement ratios by 11 percent on average.
  • Has an over 90 percent consumer adoption rate.

“2020 was a wakeup call for everyone in our industry, especially brokerage agencies whose agents were traditionally paper-based. iPipeline, one of the biggest players digitizing these processes, saw a huge growth in some areas, in both eApp and eDelivery by you and your peers last year—more than 70 percent growth in eApps, and nearly 300 percent growth in ePolicy delivery.”

“Sales-Stories” Simplifying Life and Annuity Illustrations for Agents and Consumers
Today there are three exciting sales model transformation dynamics taking place in the InsurTech life and annuity space. First, the consumer experience of financial products is being driven towards simplicity, transparency and an easy-to-understand digital experience. Second, the traditional wholesaling and agent model is on the cusp of radical transformation, shifting towards a hybrid (cyborg) agent/wholesaler who is digitally enabled with interactive educational sales tools. Third, the “pre-sale to application experience” is rapidly driving towards a “single experience” digital workflow, from quote to pre-sale proposal to eApp submission. A seamless experience completed in minutes, “live” and during the engagement with the prospective client. These three strategic shifts are core drivers to meeting the new FinTech “experience threshold.” and will be critical to sustainable growth for the life and annuity sector going forward.

I am very excited to say that Ensight’s new “Sales Story” platform module has made a significant leap forward in helping to drive these industry shifts. Working in partnership with leading life, LTCI and annuity insurance carriers and national distributors, Ensight™ has created a configurable sales experience engine, empowering the rapid creation of a broad range of different types of consumer-centric sales experiences—based on rich content and personalized client illustration data. For instance, a “Sales Story” may take the form of a new engaging product concept to support a critical market launch, encapsulating the product benefits and performance in an intuitive, personalized interactive microsite. Or a “story” may take the form of an online product training course. Or a step-by-step sales script to walk a client through a proposal at the point of sale. The Ensight “Sales Stories” engine is a highly configurable platform, enabling stories to be customized for each carrier’s or distributor’s sales model.

Ensight’s “Sales Stories” are also modernizing the traditional “sales concept” experience. The most successful financial professionals engage the client based on financial need and “story selling,” the art of “telling a story with the aim of engaging your client, so they remember, connect, and perceive the benefits of acquiring your product or service.” “Concept-selling” has been at the heart of life, LTCI and annuity sales for decades. Ensight has modernized the art of concept selling for the digital era. Think of an elegantly designed, interactive supplement retirement, Cost of Waiting, or “Life vs Another Asset” concept—that a client can digitally play with to drive understanding.

Finally, Ensight’s ”Sales Stories” also increase agent sales effectiveness (e.g. higher sales closing rates) for carriers and distributors with agent-based networks, providing the financial professional with a best practice, compliant and engaging (interactive) sales script to run a meaningful client conversation. Every captive agent network is seeking to make every agent, whether new to the business or not, a top selling agent in the field. Similarly, insurance carriers are seeking to digitally scale the expertise, education and pitch of the wholesaler. Ensight™ Sales Stories is the digital sales enablement platform to deliver on both.

Life and Annuity True Mobile Illustrations and eApp for Carriers
illustrate inc is proud to have recently launched OPUS Mobile, a downloadable app for individual life insurance carriers. OPUS Mobile is designed and customized to be carrier specific, with the core functionality centering on instant calculations and quotes for virtually any life or annuity product for on-screen visualization and report generation.

Lyndon Edwards, president of illustrate inc says, “Data shows that mobile users live in the app world and that downloaded apps capture much higher levels of user attention and usage than going through a mobile browser. Accessibility, design, user experience, and overall functionality are built specifically for the app, and users are very familiar and comfortable in that environment.”

While the entire OPUS line of web solutions—illustrations, eApps, and more—are responsive in design, meaning they will automatically adjust and reorientate to virtually any device and screen size, OPUS Mobile takes it to that next level.

“Our approach was to take OPUS Mobile beyond the core powerful quoting and reporting functionality through providing the opportunity to add high value features including quote compare, user preferences and tools, product and marketing information, needs analysis, push notifications, and more. Built using a single code base for both Apple and Android, OPUS Mobile is integration ready and highly secure.”

A major U.S. carrier has recently launched OPUS Mobile to their thousands of agents across the country. This custom branded carrier app is fully integrated with other company apps and systems, covers multi-channel requirements, and has a web service to allow approved users access on their desktop.

Carriers Deploying Self-Service Solutions for Life Insurance Policyholders
Sureify, an established insurtech provider, finds that roadblocks like legacy systems that don’t pair well with the new digital capabilities and a complex product line that isn’t typically intuitive are holding some insurers back from jumping into the digital waters where self-service is concerned. But perhaps the biggest hurdle remains confidence in the capability and security of self service.

“Life insurance agents have historically referred policyholders to call centers—the former pinnacle of self-service—because they had confidence in the ability of those call center employees to answer questions and solve problems,” explained Dustin Yoder, Sureify’s CEO and founder. “In 2021, we are helping insurers build the same kind of confidence into their web and mobile capabilities. Sureify’s goal is to help carriers’ reps and agents feel 100 percent comfortable referring their customers to these digital platforms, like LifetimeService, to find answers and solve problems. Once that confidence is achieved, those agents can focus their time and effort on building and growing business.”

  • LifetimeAcquire: Powers omnichannel sales capabilities that drive increased placement rates via quoting, e-application, automated underwriting and e-delivery.
  • LifetimeEngage: Uses multiple engagement methods and analytics to foster a lifelong digital relationship with policyholders, leading to a greater lifetime value for each policyholder.
  • LifetimeService: Enables insurers to provide a comprehensive digital self-service suite for their policyholders.

Sureify is a SaaS platform for the life and annuity industry that provides the digital technology experience that today’s customers expect. Sureify’s platform, Lifetime, is a modular, highly configurable set of software solutions that sits on top of policy administration systems. Lifetime delivers a best-in-class experience that modernizes sales, policyholder servicing and innovative customer engagement.

The solution platform landscape for life and annuities is growing and the workflow models are multiplying. We are now seeing new innovative digital point of sales solutions that not only help close the sale but are designed for our new virtual world. Even if agents and consumers are not traveling, they still spend more time on their mobile devices than their laptops. As the Millennials are becoming the target consumer, self-service technology solutions are growing in popularity.

The World Of Electronic Health Records (EHR) For Life Insurance Underwriting

Electronic Health Records (EHR) are the hottest trend in life insurance underwriting today. The growing accessibility and innovation by solution providers is transforming the life underwriting process. Understanding Electronic Health Records and the benefits are important. We will also explore how you get access to EHR and who is offering EHR services.

What is EHR and How to “Triage” the Data?
I first reached out to Drake Livada, life sales, and Nicholas Irwin, director of underwriting, at Verisk to educate on EHR and how it has impacted the industry today. As the COVID-19 pandemic adds risk to countless business and personal interactions, ways of life are shifting toward the virtual world. Suddenly caught up in this transformation, life insurers are urgently seeking electronic sources of information to enable a digital customer journey, and electronic health data is coming to the fore.

Electronic health data can be compiled from many sources and shared digitally through mechanisms such as health information exchanges (HIEs). Health data can be either structured data such as coded diagnosis (ICD), lab testing results with standardized values, and vital signs; or unstructured data, which often includes narrative style notes to document vital information such as visit summary, radiology results, or pathology results. Some types of electronic health data such as pharmacy, lab, and health claims are much more widely available and easier to use than electronic health records, but the latter can provide greater granularity to support a more refined view of mortality risk.

The health data information available within the EHR can create opportunities for the digitization of life insurance underwriting. Unfortunately, the structure—or lack of it—in the EHR presents challenges. For starters there are 15 different medical coding systems representing over one million different codes that need to be handled and processed. Even if one built a system to handle these over one million unique codes there is still the challenge of numerous medical coding errors, duplicate values, and transcription errors which requires a robust data validation system to handle. Moreover, many key rating elements, such as cancer stage and EKG interpretations, are only available in unstructured format requiring natural language processing in order to ingest.

Due to the incredible challenge of processing this data nearly all carriers are still treating EHRs like attending physician statements and reviewing the entire file manually. This can take one to two hours per case as the files are often over 1000 pages long with most of the information being completely useless from an underwriting perspective. To solve this challenge Verisk has made the upfront investment on behalf of the industry and assembled a massive team of seasoned life underwriters, medical professionals, biostatisticians, and IT professionals to develop a comprehensive system to ingest, interpret, and evaluate EHR data in real time. Nicholas Irwin, director of underwriting, explained, “Verisk’s EHR Triage engine is an API that ingests a batch of EHR files (CCDs) via API and generates a one to two page summary of the key underwriting elements in the file(s) as well as providing an overall underwriting score in the form of number of debits. Verisk’s tool is called “triage” as it rates the simple cases that underwriters would rate in their sleep, while referring the more complex cases to underwriters. Verisk’s tool presents substantial time savings even for the cases Verisk refers to underwriters by supplying a summary of the key data elements an underwriter needs to rate the case. The intent of the tool is not to replace underwriters, but rather to enable underwriters to spend more of their time on assessing mortality risk and less of their time on scanning 1000 pages to find the 10 nuggets of useful data.”

An Easy Connection for Life Carriers and Distributors to EHR Data
As I continued my research, I discovered all roads lead to Human API. I recently synced up with Nick Zambruno, solutions lead, and Anthony Chan in Product Marketing to learn more about their platform and services. Human API is a leading insurtech vendor in the electronic health records (EHR) category. The Human API platform helps life insurance carriers create better client and agent experiences by delivering health records from a variety of different health data sources, both online and offline. The company started by accessing medical records through patient portal integrations but has expanded their connectivity to health information exchanges (HIEs) and national EHR networks such as Epic ChartGateway and Veradigm, as well as strategic partnerships for the delivery of traditional APS. Over the last few years Human API has helped carriers such as Prudential, Allstate, John Hancock, AAA and Principal offer a streamlined digital underwriting process that relies less on traditional underwriting requirements such as exams, fluids and attending physician statements. Carrier customers have cited hit rates of over 40 percent with the EHR platform and are optimistic that the health data can be used to automate manual elements of the underwriting process. The new EHR data sources added to the Human API platform enable hit rates to exceed 50 percent, while the addition of offline medical record retrieval partnerships will drive hit rates to nearly 100 percent.

Due to the final interoperability and information blocking rules from the Department of Health and Human Services going into effect in April 2021, Human API is increasingly surfacing more clinical notes in EHR data, positioning the platform to deliver comprehensive medical data access. “Access to comprehensive EHR data is foundational to innovation and transformation of the underwriting process. We’re encouraged by the progress made to date by Human API and look forward to working together to drastically improve the consumer purchase process and experience,” said Susan Ghalili, VP of Underwriting Transformation and chief underwriter at John Hancock Insurance.

Over the past year, distribution firms have also found value in partnering with Human API directly in an effort to access health data more quickly to expedite the sales process. LIBRA and AIMCOR were two new organizations that announced partnerships in the last year with Human API. Through the Human API platform, a firm can access EHR records and digitally share the data directly with a carrier in a secure setting so automation can still be realized at the carrier level. “The insurance industry is ripe for innovation. We’re incredibly excited to be the ‘one platform for all health data’ that helps carriers create and deliver better customer and agent experiences,” said Andrei Pop, CEO of Human API.

More EHR Services by Solution Providers You Work with Everyday
I continue to see more solution providers who actively or plan to add EHR to their services for distributors and carriers this year. Those solution providers who play key roles in the life insurance new business process like Management Research Services (MRS), MediPro Direct, and Employee Pooling (EP) explained the value EHR brings to their clients.

MRS is introducing Electronic Health Records to their suite of products with guidance from clients’ requirements. Their No Code platform will allow carriers to configure their relevant products workflows based on the data source. As carriers become more confident with their actuarial models with the onset of the data source, they will be able to regulate the data used in the process. They anticipate being able to deliver a searchable interface of CCDA (standardize the content and structure for medical documents)—information that will prioritize APS requirements to improve processing time and decrease non-placement issues.

As healthcare needs become increasingly mobile or virtual, today’s EHR systems need to do more than track medical records in fixed clinical settings. MediPro Direct’s MedLink software works across all service models, from clinical to mobile to virtual, and ties into MediPro Direct’s network of several thousand mobile medical examiners nationwide. This means their systems not only track patient data but also connect service providers with ways to expand their service model and better meet patient needs.

Employee Pooling’s (EP) value proposition is to remove obstacles that get in the way of sales and enhance the customer experience. When it comes to formal and informal underwriting, obtaining medical records can hinder the fluidity of the process. “The ability to obtain electronic health records (EHR) within hours versus the days and weeks it could take to retrieve traditional medical records is a game changer and surprisingly cost effective,” says Steven Lacher, VP of Business Development. “With formal underwriting still playing a vital role in our industry, it makes sense to try and whittle down the underwriting process time by getting health records to the underwriter and the carrier in an efficient and timely manner.”

EP recently partnered with Human API (HAPI) to improve turnaround times related to obtaining medical records for both formal and informal underwriting. EHR has been fully incorporated into EP’s Accelerated Informal platform, which reduces the standard informal underwriting process from weeks to days. Lacher states, “The goal is to help agencies quickly and affordably put their important cases up to bid with conviction. Accelerated Informals stands true to its name with EP’s in-house underwriters, on-demand access to prescription drug and clinical laboratory data, and now rapidly obtained EHR data.”

In 12-24 months from now, you probably can’t even imagine a world without electronic health records playing a key role in the life insurance underwriting process. The goal is always to arrive at an underwriting decision quickly and accurately. EHR data with innovative platforms are connecting solution providers with more carriers and distributors every month to accelerate the life underwriting process.

Life Insurance Technology In 2020 Was Driven By Simplicity And Data

We all had to adapt to change beginning nine months ago with the pandemic. A distributor’s Agency Management System (AMS) must improve its quality of service for agents/advisors, field underwriting (exams) needs to be safe, and turning Inforce data to action is critical for advisors to manage their client’s policies. Here is an inside look on how life insurance solution providers adapted and innovated to these new challenges in 2020.

Agency Management Systems Essential for Distributors during COVID
Life insurance distributors in the USA and Canada faced the same challenges during COVID in 2020. I reached out to Equisoft whose Agency Management System (AMS) is the most widely used in Canada for life insurance distributors, and it is also available in the USA. I also met with OneHQ whose modern, easy-to-use CRM/AMS gained momentum in 2020.

David Nicolai, vice president, Insurance Solutions at Equisoft explains how back office automation is essential for servicing their advisors, “How do distributors stay relevant in times of accelerated change? That’s a critical question we’ve heard distributors ask so often over the past nine months. The answer, for some, is that it has been difficult—to pivot quickly and execute on a new value proposition that will enhance their ability to attract and retain the best advisors—if they are still running their business with manual, largely paper-based processes. There’s too much drag in the system. Innovation, no matter how creative their thinking is, will be hard to implement. On the other hand, we have clients who went from 100 percent paper-based to almost entirely automated and digital when they implemented the Equisoft/centralize agency management system. That made all the difference. When COVID hit and distributor staff, advisors and clients could no longer meet in person, their transition to the new reality was almost seamless. App processing, advisor communication, inforce services—all continued at pace because they didn’t rely on paper and mail. Clients received the support they needed in difficult times. Advisors appreciated the service and value their distributors were able to provide in helping them continue to meet their clients’ needs.”

Meeting with Brett Barker, Senior Account Executive at OneHQ, he provided not only information about their AMS, but client experiences during 2020. Tailored specifically for insurance distribution, OneHQ is an extremely powerful yet easy-to-use system. It’s highly configurable, replacing disjointed systems by bringing the CRM, AMS, and Compensation together plus integrating all other systems into one place. Brett explained, “Our user-friendly interface and personalized modules help give each department a dialed-in system to maximize results. As an example, a OneHQ customer recently made the move from their legacy system to OneHQ because their back office and sales teams had very little communication between systems. Wanting more data visibility for sales and back office efficiencies, the team moved to OneHQ and for the first time in years they had access to all of the information they needed within seconds. In the end, sales activity increased 20 percent and OneHQ’s innovative platform is providing better service to agents by freeing up the back office teams from running reports and answering questions.”

With the changes brought about by COVID-19 and more focus on how technology can impact sales internally and for their agents, OneHQ has witnessed a tidal wave of new clients. Their modern technology that focuses on increasing sales without sacrificing service is giving their clients an edge during these rapidly changing times. Brett continued, stating that OneHQ is increasingly seeing more of their clients beginning to offer their agents a full technology strategy starting with the CRM that integrates with their back-office system. In addition, this also makes the IMO much “stickier” with their agents. To sum it all up, Kyle J. Ginavan, CEO, OneHQ, said, “There have always been many good technology options available to insurance agents, but never a full technology strategy. While the securities industry has well-thought-out technology strategies for financial advisors, insurance distribution has typically lagged in this area. However, with COVID, we’re certainly starting to see that change.”

Exam Safety: Simplifying through Innovation
Underwriting is key to the life insurance new business process. For term insurance, a drop ticket with an exam still dominates the higher percentage of cases in 2020. Paramed exam companies are the front lines for underwriting. I reached out to Ryan Janeway, founder and CEO of MediPro Direct. Ryan explained that at this stage of the pandemic, protecting field medical teams and applicants requires access, innovation, and adaptation. Said Janeway, “Very few companies are positioned as effectively as MediPro Direct to actually improve customer experience during this crisis. MediPro Direct founded Vanguard Genetics LLC in 2015 to gain access to clinical and genetic testing services that can aid underwriters in policy-making decisions now and into the future. Under the current circumstances, our clinical lab association has provided immediate access to necessary PPE, as well as rapid COVID antigen testing to ensure the safety of our customers and team.”

As innovators, the teams at MediPro Direct and Vanguard Genetics helped bring rapid antigen testing to market and are now validating saliva test collection methods to simplify the collection process for these tests. Additionally, their teams have reduced manufacturing costs by up to 70 percent in order to dramatically improve public access to testing—which, combined with the distribution of vaccines, are key to getting customer business and lives back on track. Under proper credentialing, these tests can be used in the office and in the field to help ensure safety during insurance exams, clinical trials, and other medical interactions. MediPro Direct has adapted to the current environment by creating unique tools and processes such as its Tier1 Network™, to increase examiner coverage for carriers, its Quality First™ system to dramatically improve access to real-time quality data for carriers, and its RemoteID™ system for scaling and improving tele-interview processes without the need for fixed call centers.

Inforce Policy Data Turns to Action
As the digitization of the life insurance industry persists, the concept of shared visibility of data is becoming more relevant. Shared visibility of information across distribution partners helps to keep carriers, BGAs, and advisors all aligned on what’s working as it should and what areas have room for improvement. When it comes to inforce policy management specifically, that shared visibility is especially important. But timely exchange of information is not enough to satisfy a proactive, compliant, and efficient inforce management strategy.

Visibility of inforce data alone is table-stakes. As you continue to seek ways to not only differentiate but also provide more value to your distribution partners, you need a way to make that data and information you share with each other actionable. That’s where a platform like Proformex comes in as the right partner for you and your community. Proformex connects visibility to efficiency, simplicity, and opportunity. By aggregating data and giving everyone access to it—their platform takes that data and provides you with powerful analytics and insights that you and your distribution partners can use to make data-driven decisions that produce real-world outcomes. And there’s no manual burden involved; by automatically surfacing both risks and opportunities to you and your distribution partners, you’ll now have the ability to proactively manage potential problems and seize revenue-generating opportunities. It’s a win for everyone, from carrier to client.

Simplifying the life insurance new business experience impacts agents, distributors, carriers and consumers. Mining and analyzing life inforce data and turning it into action creates new sales opportunities for advisors to engage with their clients. COVID obviously accelerated innovation in life insurance technology in 2020. For those solution providers that have adapted and taken on the challenges head on with new innovations, they will have staying power in our industry moving forward in 2021.

Independent Life Distribution Technology Survey

The Life Brokerage Technology Committee (formerly NAILBA Technology) is a gathering of industry technology leaders with great experience to discuss and report on standards and trends. The group is represented by brokerage general agencies, carriers, medical information providers and solution vendors. Workflows were documented, data sets were negotiated, and appetite to change was measured. In short, the day’s discussions produced new solutions and road maps that materialized some years later. The committee’s work over the last two decades did bear fruit and greatly impacted cycle time, accuracy (IGO), underwriting, and digitalization to big data, while the cost savings were taken over by rising compliance cost.

Then COVID-19 hit us out of left field. A new virus to all of us, requiring us “overnight” to work from home, wear a mask and quarantine. Thankfully the current maturity of our available technology made it possible. The pandemic forced change also in the life insurance process as well. In 2016, 45 percent of BGA new business submissions were E-Apps (full) which by October 2020 jumped to 75 percent. In 2016 the number one E-App obstacle to adoption was “Agent Training.” It took a pandemic to create change and even other lines of businesses (i.e., annuity, long term care, final expense, group, disability) grew from nowhere to 20 percent.

LBTC conducted a 2020 survey that was different from the previous eight years of surveys. The new qualitative paradigm focused on areas of the workflow process to automate and standardize whereas the previous surveys focused quantitatively on tools and vendors. The PaperClip survey adhered to the old survey scheme because many people would use its results to help justify partnering on projects and decide who to spend resources on. Experience shows you want to engage with market leaders whereby the desired change being introduced would reach the largest audience possible. In review of the LBTC 2020 survey the takeaways were exchange standards, automated underwriting, commission standards and E-Policy delivery.

The leader by request remains “Data Exchange Standards” with the specific mention of Application Program Interface (API), and second was Automated Underwriting (AU). These two items are joined at the hip and to get an effective AU you will need the appropriate data. ACORD messaging as the standard for many years became problematic because of the different needs it had to address for data exchange, hence why virtually everyone had their flavors of ACORD standards. This is now changing to a less structured format, to a simpler JSON (paired values) model, while relying on a common data dictionary. The next question becomes who should create the data dictionary, LBTC or the vendor community? The LBTC is the best venue to construct the data dictionary terms and to manage the terms. The Data Dictionary, though, should support custom terms as needed.

Next is actual integration from the source data container (E-App, AMS, Paper App) to the receiving partner’s data container, SaaS to SaaS. So, let us start with the design question of “Point to Point” or a “Centralized Hub Model.” Well, the Centralized Hub Model is the most efficient choice based on our 22 years of experience exchanging over 70 million documents just last year among 1,400 Points of Presence (PoP). Today, data integration is dominated by point-to-point vendor SaaS PoP. One would think it should be a one to many, but every customer needs a change because they do things differently—ACORD’s challenge. Whoever brings the solution to market, it should be “Data Dictionary” based and the community (LBTC) should police it like we did with document exchange (can anyone say doctypes…).

The 2020 PaperClip Survey maintained the vendor questions so the reader can see what their peers are doing with their technology resources. We see from our customers a continued trend to move from on-premises to vendor SaaS solutions. The driving forces are work from home, compliance, and technology staffing cost. The buyer’s top requirements are compliance and integrations with other vendors. Larger offices (> 100 users) want Cloud (Azure, AWS, IBM, etc.) deployments because cyber security depth will only be accomplished in the Cloud.

The following results reflect vendors that singularly or collectively obtained more than 65 percent market share. The complete report can be downloaded from PaperClip’s website. The survey request was sent to over 5,000 people—249 started the survey and 39 participants completed it, dominated by BGA distributor’s (33). The responding BGAs reported they process 150 to 300 life and annuity applications per month. These BGAs process 80 percent of their business between six to 10 carriers. BGAs found very important to them “ease of doing business with,” “product pricing” and “relationship with the underwriter” in keeping their business. An agent is producing about 50 to 150 applications annually and the age of these producers are 40 to 60 years old.

BGAs use social media to attract agents and to keep current producers informed. The primary services are LinkedIn (87 percent), Facebook (56 percent) and Twitter (41 percent). Fifty-six percent advertise on these social services while only 38 percent prospect.

The following solution categories and vendors again represent the market share leaders, but each category is being challenged by new vendors that have a strong mobile offering. As noted above, the age of producers is just now including millennials and that group will gravitate to mobile selling tools. The most requested mobile applications are quotes, illustrations, and pending case status.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the solution that manages your client relationships and interactions with prospects. There were eight different vendor responses, led by SmartOffice and “None,” and 25 percent of respondents do not use CRM tools. I expect significant change here with mobile adoption.

Agency Management Systems (AMS) market leaders remain iPipeline’s Agency Integrator and Ebix’s SmartOffice. Only 15 percent of BGAs open access to their AMS to producers. BGA’s would open more if “pending case status” was better. Fifty percent of BGAs use carrier web sites instead of accepting the AMS data feeds. The lack of timely and accurate data is the objection and remains on the BGA’s top five LBTC request list. Quote Engine had 14 vendors listed with the market share belonging to iPipeline’s LifePipe and Ebix’s VitalSales Suite.

Document management with eight vendors maintains PaperClip’s Virtual Client Folder as the market leader. Interesting here is that 13 percent of respondents report “None.” I hope this means they paper-out and store paper. If this means images on a local hard drive it would be considered today as gross neglect. BGAs preferred method of submission to carriers and receipt from medical service providers is “secure email” and “imaging vendor;” at zero percent, looks like the FAX machine and FTP servers are finished. Secure email delivery was led by PaperClip’s eM4 and TLS direct connect. Twelve percent reported “None” which opens their email traffic to the world—not a good thing.

Electronic Application (E-App) with six vendors noted is led by iPipeline’s iGO. The next group combined representing 30 percent were Applicint, Ebix’s LifeSpeed and PORCH. Twenty percent selected “None” with only one write in for “home grown.” E-App electronic signature most used was DocuSign followed by Click Wrap (10 percent). Deeper in the survey, Customers (41 percent) would prefer a simple “Click and Close” solution. Drop Ticket options support nine solutions with “Carrier’s Direct Link” and ApplicInt holding the market share. Agents that will take a paper application and then rekey it into an E-App was 25 percent and BGAs that keyed from paper was 36 percent. This tells us that 61 percent of new business is from distribution via E-App and 39 percent is still paper.

Electronic Licensing and Contracting (E Con) only had two vendors with the leading market share held by SureLC followed by “None” (18 percent). Electronic Policy Delivery (E-Policy) is owned by carrier provided solutions. The major reason is risk tolerance—each carrier wants it done their way. BGAs would like to see that change but I think this falls into that untouchable realm of events like Check21 and 1035s—a “carrier-controlled process.” The leading E-Policy E-Sign vendor is DocuSign.

Compliance was something new added to the survey. Since compliance continues to demand more resources, we wanted to see how those surveyed viewed compliance. Many misconceptions surround responsibility for unauthorized use of confidential information. The truth is, “You can outsource your technology but not your responsibility.” Managing third party confidentiality is a double-edged sword—it cuts both ways. Access to secure data starts with the User placing confidential data into the solution, which creates a liability for the vendor.

When asked, “Where do you maintain client confidential data?”, 28 percent reported “In House,” 44 percent “Vendor” and 33 percent “Both.” This means the majority of BGAs continue to maintain shadow files, most likely in digital format. Here is where we start judging neglect versus gross neglect. If you conducted the best practices of oversite required by federal and state authorities’ laws, regulations and rules, loss of data at worst could be found neglectful. If you ignore or only partially approached cyber security and conduct, you most definitely would be considered grossly negligent and most likely fined.

Compliance “Best Practices” start with documenting how you control confidential information. Areas to address typically fall into these categories: Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy. These policy documents serve as the basis of training your staff on how to manage the personal data customers have trusted you with. Once you have policies and procedures you must maintain these documents to reflect change that naturally occurs as a business scales both up and out.

Annually these processes are evaluated and tested by an approved auditing firm called Service Organization Controls Audits (SOC Audits) and, because you manage medical information, HIPAA Audit as well. As part of the SOC Audits you need to provide evidence of third-party penetration testing of your internal/external network assets where confidential data exist. The 2020 Survey reveals that 25 percent conduct SOC Audits, 43 percent HIPAA and eight percent PEN Testing. A positive trend is the adoption of Multi Factor Authentication (MFA /2FA) at 72 percent and Single Sign On (SSO) at 59 percent. BGAs need to become more aggressive with cyber security and compliance.

Since most solutions are outsourced to vendors, the good news is that you can get major SOC and HIPAA carve outs by leveraging the vendors compliance documentation (i.e., SOC2T2, HIPAA, PEN, etc.). This helps to keep your audit simple. Some simple suggestions: Your “Clean Desk” policies should ban the keeping of shadow files and all employees should execute a privacy agreement that identifies your documented policies. Training and infrastructure maintenance should be continuous, so start a business objective to get audited (everyone starts with a SOC2 Type 1) and ask your auditor if they would combine it with HIPAA because the auditing controls are very similar. Great time and cost saver.

To improve cyber security, I would recommend we move to a 10-character minimum password scheme. Today, according to many experts, it takes five hours to crack an eight character all lowercase password, while it takes four months to crack a 10 character all lowercase password. Very strong passwords at eight characters can take a couple of years to crack and the Vendor community follows the strong password requirements. Truth is that hackers are not trying to hack your password when it’s proven to be easier with Phishing, password sharing, and poor system design that leaves passwords stored on-site in text files, databases, browsers and the actual code or email with no encryption.

Overall, the survey was good with positive trends to eliminating paper and touch points to process business. E-App for term and other simplified issue products has strong adoption, agent self-service portals have come online, automatic underwriting is rolling out quickly and “I’ve got a guy” quoting is seeing investment from BGAs, IMOs and carriers. Vendors have new challenges too—integration. The world of cyber security and compliance is making it harder to align with vendor partners that have a mature cyber security regimen. The risk of integration is in competition with Users ease of use. Example: If you’re downstream of a SSO integration, how can you document that SSO complied with MFA? How can you document your TLS connection did connect securely? How did the agent manage the information they electronically captured and sent to you? What are their safeguards?

Distribution is making the change and the industry is prepared.

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